Showing papers in "Thesis Eleven in 1988"

Civil Society And Social Theory

Abstract: Social movements in the East and the West, the North and the South have come to rely on various interesting, albeit eclectic syntheses inherited from the history of the concept of civil society. They presuppose (in different corn-binations) something like the Gramscian tripartite framework of civil society, state and economy, while preserving key aspects of the Marxian critique of bourgeois society. But they have also integrated liberal claims on behalf of individual riglxic, the stress of Hegel, Tocqueville and others on societal plurality, the emphasis of Durkheiin on the component of social solidarity, and the defense of the public sphere and political participation stressed by Habermas and Arendt.2

Social Theory And The Concept Of Civilisation

Abstract: 1. Two developments testify to the growing importance of eivilizational perspectives in the social sciences. On the one hand, the comparative analysis of civilizations is increasingly recognized as a central rather? than 3 marginal theme; in particula.r, Weber’s pioneering attempt to link the comparison of Orient and Occident to other concerns of social theory now appears as the most important part of his legacy. In this regard, Benjamin Nelson~s work paved the way for a new understanding of Weber. On the other hand, more attention is paid to the dimensions

Feminist Perspectives On Science Studies

Abstract: I want to suggest that what is distinctive about contemporary feminist criticism of science begins with the identification of gender as an analytic tool in the study of science. Roughly ten years ago, studies of women per se, or of sexual difference, gave rise (with the kind of inexorable logic of feminist inquiry that has been exhibited in other fields) to the study of the more global symbolic and structural work of gender labels. Our purpose in this move was not to privilege gender as a social marker, conspicuous though it may be, but rather to underscore and respond to the de facto privileging of gender that is already in evidence, and that has indeed been evident throughout the history of scientific discourse. We have argued that the language of gender has been employed, at least since the origins of modern science, as a persistent and privileged marker of precisely those distinctions that have been most central to the cognitive and social politics of scientific growth. From the seventeenth century on, particular ideals of "masculine" and "feminine" have been persistently called upon to delineate and order the domains of mind and nature, reason and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. Only a "virile" mind, properly cleansed of all traces of femininity, could effectively consummate Bacon's ideal of a "chaste and lawful marriage between Mind and Nature"-a sacred contract for "leading Nature with all her children to bind her to [man's] service and make her [his] slave." Our intent in signaling the role of gender in scientific rhetoric was not to reinforce but to defuse the force of this rhetoric. To this end, it was necessary first to uncover the uses of gender in science that were already in existence, to expose the presence (and force) of gender imagery that was so familiar it had become almost invisible. In other words, our

The Gorbachev Interlude

Abstract: ference without unleashing a grand social, ethnic and political crisis and/or without inducing (in response to or m anticipation of such a crisis) a backlash from the military and the Party establishment leading either to an emasculation of the &dquo;reforms&dquo;, or to the appointment of Mr. Gorbachev to some hydro-electric plant of the Lena region. To put it in a nutshell: either the people will remain (as they do up to now) passive-and the possible effects of the Gorbachevchina will be narrowly limited; or the people will start moving, m which case either things will get out of hand or a (pre-emptive or corrective reaction-not necessarily successful) will take place-as in China, four times running. The Gorbachev illusion is the idea (predominant today in the West, possibly shared by Gorbachev himself) that substantive reforms, in a couniry like todaY’8 ~~.ss~~, can be introduced strictly from above, that ~r®u can order people to be self-active whilst restraining themselves within some vague and undefined (therefore, more threatening) limits, that you can retain the absolutist power of bureaucracy whilst dismantling the social and economic bases of this power-in brief, that, like Descartes’ God, you can send society moving with a fi-ilip and that you can change the system without changing it. There have bc~~j to be sure, societies and historical periods when

Reviews : Sam Whimster and Scott Lash, Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity (Allen and Unwin, London, 1987)

Abstract: are placed. Of course, these sources are not distinct as the first is very much a product of the second. The ’crisis’ of modernity, the much mooted &dquo;collapse of reason&dquo;, and theories of postmodemism have brought fresh readers to Weber. The pages have fallen open at those brooding passages where Weber searches out the black holes of contemporary culture. In these passages Weber describes a rationalized zuorid which no longer has any connection with substantive reason and develops in autonomy from it.

New Zealand's Lange Government and The Labour Tradition: straying or Staying?:

Abstract: Almost a century after Twain made these remarks, New Zealand retains its capacity to perplex and intrigue outsiders. This is as true of its politics as it is of the other aspeds of its character. Those used to the often lumbering politics of Washington and Westminster find the speed of New Zealand policy shifts arresting. In the late seventies, the Kiwis accepted sporting ties with South Africa, then in 1984 made what appeared to be a complete about-face in the international arena with a